Write On! :: Comments :: Truly awful writing takes talent

Defining bad writing is kind of like defining pornography.

There are far too many individual components that may potentially contribute to the badness to ever hope to exhaustively list.

See what I mean? You could get twenty or so just out of that sentence.

Vague grammar, wandering voice, getting too telly, not getting telly enough, being too vague, being too specific, not to mention the whole realm of subjective factors.

What if the question were to be "What makes truly stellar writing stand out from the rest?"

The list would be just as impossible to create.

Try striving for simplicity: "Good writing attracts. Bad writing repels."

By that measure, the "goodness" or "badness" of a particular piece of writing could be easily gauged by the sheer number of people attracted or repulsed by it.

Any attempt to further categorize results in an excercise called "knowing the desert by counting the sands".

Ne?

--
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson

then how do porn studios know they're making porn before they start shooting?

There's a rather big difference, too - the folks who make porn intend to do so; the folks who make really bad writing generally don't.

I don't expect that anyone could come up with a formula for either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad writing, but I do believe that there are signposts that we can watch out for to know when we're veering into the realm of the atrocious.
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

"then how do porn studios know they're making porn before they start shooting?"

Good point. :)

But conversely, if we set out to create a piece of "Bad Writing" and we succeed, does that mean that we've actually done "Good Writing" since it conveys exactly the sense we were striving for?

Is bad writing bad by some objective aesthetic measurement?

Does bad writing have to be accidentally bad to be bad?

If writing achieves precisely the goal it was intended for, can it be called "bad"?

Some of the things I strive to avoid are:

1) Repetition of word or phrase within too short of a time period
2) Overuse of adverbs (should I change that to use?)
3) Excessively descriptive dialog tags, particularly when they are primarily adverbs, or overly charactered.
4) Leading one down the primrose path.
5) Cliche

What I strive FOR

1) Naturalness - letting the emotions pile on and build in a natural rhythm
2) Felxibility - being prepared to adapt to the developments of the piece
--
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson
[ Parent ]

if we set out to create a piece of "Bad Writing" and we succeed, does that mean that we've actually done "Good Writing" since it conveys exactly the sense we were striving for?

No, I'd say in that case we've done "successful writing" - successfully making the impression we intended. Outside of pranks and the Bulwer-Lytton contest people don't usually intend bad writing, so "successful writing" is good (or at least adequate) writing - but it doesn't have to be.
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

Make a new account